Less sludgy, still lovely.
On April 26, Sargent House releases ”Heavy Rocks” and ”Attention Please”, two brand new albums from Japanese sludge trio Boris. On all of Attention Please, guitarist Wata sings lead vocals for the first time ever— download a string-laden track called “Hope” from the record HERE.
I don’t know if you guys would of this flick, it’s a tad obscure…
When the news broke in 2009 that David Fincher had been working on a film about Facebook’s inception, I remember being unreservedly aloof to the whole gimmicky prospect. Social networking can’t be the impetus for a box office-busting cinema experience, can it? In short, yes it can.
To keep it brief, The Social Network is a finely crafted film. It looks nice and it’s two hours fly by. Without an air of ostentatiousness, the vicarious story of Mark Zuckerberg and his face(book) is portrayed very matter-of-factly, making the character reasonably unlikeable and, more crucially, ordinary.
Although the eerily ageless Jesse Eisenberg has been nominated in the Best Actor category for the Oscar’s this year, the best performance comes from Andrew Garfield as Zuckerberg’s only friend Eduardo, an inspired depiction and definitely a fine actor in the making (check out the Red Riding Trilogy for more Garfield-shaped performances).
Similarly to screenplay writer Sorkin’s The West Wing - where world politics are infused with personal realities - the story of The Social Network feels delicate in comparison to the success of it’s stimulus, in Facebook. This isn’t a problem, but it does make the film’s identity difficult to inscribe. Regardless of whether it’s a grossly funded indie flick or a dainty Hollywood blockbuster, The Social Network is an enjoyable escapade into the harsh realities of our connected networked age and how disenfranchised and lonely it can be.
IT’S LIKE NETWORK ONLY MORE SOCIAL & LESS GOOD - 4.5 GOLDEN NUGGETS
Film viewed on January 23rd at The Prince Charles Cinema, Leicester Sq.
PS - if it’s set to win anything at the academy awards, I’d make a punt at Best Original Score - Reznor and Ross’ work is muted yet sonorous (quite like the story itself) - fantastiche!
Now, now, calm down you roustabouts. I know it’s a crime that I am only just seeing Withnail & I here in 2011 for the first time, but at least I’m trying, right?
Unexpectedly, I really, really loved this film. Perhaps for me one of the finest British comedies of all time (and I only saw it a few days ago). The quintessential buddy movie, Withnail (Richard E. Grant) and narrator/’I’ in question Marwood (Paul McGann) are two unemployed actors that lurk around a 1969 Camden Town. Incarcerated in the squalor of the capital, they set out on a journey to the English countryside to just ‘get away from it all for a while’. A very bare-bones story, the superfluous and lavish use of the english tongue by writer and director Bruce Robinson is inspired, making these two larger than life, Dickensian characters a real treat to watch over the case of two hours.
Although the film is synonymous with Richard E. Grant’s big break into acting, I think that the star of the celluloid here comes from traditional thespian Richard Griffiths as Withnail’s obtrusive, histrionic Uncle Monty.
As a sign of it’s brilliance, the film is incredibly quotable. My favourite coming from the ever deadpan Monty proclaiming that ‘Flowers are essentially tarts; prostitutes for the bees.’ Fiendishly eloquent.
As mentioned, don’t expect a calculated storyline with Withnail & I, Robinson has created a timeless, archetypally British film that is much more concerned about the journey of our two protagonists, rather than their eventual equilibriums. Little but with some gall; watch it.
ME, MYSELF AND WITHNAIL - 5/5 GOLDEN NUGGETS.
Film viewed on January 22nd at my house.
First off, for any 365 Films fans (are you out there…?), apologies for such limited new content this week. Working six days a week is both tiresome and refractory to the film-a-day cause. I’m getting my life back together and now playing catch up.
Set in the Australian outback, The Proposition is a Western of sorts; less spaghetti, more plaintive and morose. Following a guns-blazing opening sequence, outlaw Charlie Burns agrees to seek out his infamous, loose-cannon brother Arthur, in exchange for the freedom of his younger, irritatingly coward brother. The proposition in question comes from Directed by John Hillcoat - the man behind the appraised The Road (don’t worry, it’s on my list) - it has an element of delicacy that makes the occassionally brutal violence of the film more melancholic than shocking.
The performances all round are really solid too. The irrefutably alluring Guy Pearce is frequently mute yet evocative Charlie Burns and John Hurt is great as an eccentric bounty hunter. Even Ray Winstone - who usually relies on his exhausted, ‘Landan’ plebeian schtick (Sexy Beast et al) - is genuinely impressive as an austere advocate of the law. However, the film’s soundtrack is the true star. Written and performed by blues laureate and screenplay writer Nick Cave and the vastly under-loved Dirty Three violinist Warren Ellis, the pair effortlessly manage to encapsulate the morose storyline and it’s uncultivated setting.
An undeniably fantastic film, the only reason it isn’t deserving of five star acclaim is that Nick Cave has written better elsewhere. What with his strict nine-hour-a-day writing regime and four-decade spanning music career, he is the pioneering Devil’s son of the written word, taking great influence from Old Testament oration and transforming it into anarchic, blues lyricism. Perhaps with the next Hillcoat/Cave collaboration just around the corner, maybe we can expect the ol’ Aussie mule and film newbie to surpass his longstanding career as a post-punk laureate.
REACH FOR THE SKY, COWBOY - 4.5/5 GOLDEN NUGGETS.
Film viewed on January 22nd at my house.
So many consider celluloid to be the timeless medium of expression; a movement and form of communication that transcends both it’s initial social conditionings and the culture it was birthed from. This couldn’t be more true when I had the privilege of seeing the reconstructed and restored version of Lang’s Metropolis last year; such a perpetual ‘silent’ movie that still dazzles audiences eighty years since it’s initial release. But then there’s the comparatively foetal 1999 flick The Boondock Saints, which is démodé from the off. Swings and roundabouts really.
Starring two of Hollywood’s finest F-listers Sean Patrick Flannery and Norman Reedus, the pair play Irish fraternal twins who do a Batman and try to remove the scum of the Boston underworld appetite for destruction style.
This film is cheesy beyond belief and was most certainly born out of a post, good Tarantino era with wanton violence. The soundtrack is almost porn like (Ron Jeremy even makes a cameo appearance…proper porned up), the fade-to-black sequences after every scene are sloppy and the plot doesn’t really withstand 110 minutes.
Having said that, this culty, turd of a film makes for pretty fun viewing on a Wednesday evening. This is mainly due to the brilliantly epicene performance by Willem ’don’t call him William’ Defoe as the sardonically sinister and flamboyant FBI detective Paul Smecker, constantly clutching at the tails of the pair as they partake in their pugnacious pastimes. Check out the terrifying/mesmerising still of Dafoe in drag below, no wonder he has such an air of mystique and uncanniness in pretty much everything he has ever done; it all started here!
The Boondock Saints is very asinine, resembling a Marvel comic strip more than a feature film. But it’s this silliness that you have to embrace if you want to enjoy it. Definitely a Marmite film but if you feel like avoiding the rubbish that’s on your box, watch this rubbish instead (or the even more rubbish-thus brilliant The Room).
DAFOE SAYS NO! - 3/5 GOLDEN NUGGETS
Film viewed on January 18th at my house.
One of the most flummoxing news stories of the last ten years was the case of Austrian Josef Fritzl: the vulgar father who held his family in captive in a meticulously crafted basement lair for a quarter of a century, partaking in gross sexual acts along the way. Shocking the masses worldwide, it has to be assumed that the case was influential in the making of Dogtooth. With this in mind, it’s remarkable that director Giorgos Lanthimos has taken such source material and devised an organically constructed and often spiteful black comedy that revels in the macabre.
A family film, not a film for the family. A domineering, nameless father confines his three nameless children and nameless - and equally morally inept - wife in the family household. Living like hermits, the adolescent offspring are unknowing and unknown to the outside world. Left to their own devices and stuck in an endless infancy, they know no different than to take their parents’ teachings as gospel. A ‘keyboard’ is a woman’s lady parts, a cat is a flesh eating monster and destroyer of the universe, and it’s perfectly normal to lick your siblings and kiss them. Of course it is.
Unlike other prisoner movies like the Hostel/Saw (cash-back) franchises, what is most harrowing about Dogtooth is that these detained characters’ know no better; for them it’s the norm to suffer such entrapment and they are lead to fear the outside world. What’s even more surprising is how Dogtooth can be simultaneously horrifying and hilarious; we empathise with the three depraved children but relish in their limited creativity; playing games such as ‘who can run their hand under the hot tap for longest’, merely to past the perennial days.
Relative newcomer, director Giorgos Lanthimos is ruthlessly acerbic in the driving seat; with static shots that remains unobtrusive and in juxtaposition with the claustrophobic nature of the narrative. Much to the disbelief of proper film critics, I actually found the performances to be solid from the cast; portraying such wooden, undermining and feckless characters with the downplay they deserve.
A passive film, the pivotal sequence at the close of the film is genuinely one of the most wince-generating experiences I have ever seen on screen (and yes, I’ve seen 127 Hours), with an ending that is well crafted and leaves you perching exasperatingly in your seat, in a good way.
I don’t really know my Greek cinema all that well, but literarily, this film does hold within it incestuous parallels to the Theban Oedipus stories, remaining it’s oddities along the way too. All in all, a fantastic little film that questions the disparaging nature of life with a humorous bite.
2point4 children? Better. 4.5/5 GOLDEN NUGGETS
Film viewed on January 17th at my house.
PS - It won a best film award at Cannes so, you know, it’s one of those.
I remember back in late 2009 really being intrigued by this film. What with all the film festival award selections, an existentialist plot and Paul Giamatti, what’s not to like? Getting round to it now in 2011, I must say that Cold Souls left me feeling flat and, well cold, really.
Indie-troubadour Paul Giamatti plays an exacerbated version of the actor Paul Giamatti. You have to believe that it’s as truthful to the real person for the plot to really take off but this just isn’t the case. Giamatti is too nasal, mopey and neurotic to be classified as endearing in this movie. So, from the off, we’re struggling to really get on board.
Unhappy with being so tedious, the actor discovers a clinic where you can transfer your soul with a donor’s and decides to give it a whirl. That takes us up to the thirty minute mark. From there the rest of the film pans out with his struggle to retrace his own soul (it’s ended up in Russia, obviously) as he is becoming more disheartened, disillusioned and, you’ve guessed it, tedious.
Usually a verbose chap, I am exasperated trying to elaborate the boggle that is this film. Due to it’s dryness and representation of the ludicrous as the norm, it’s never escaped comparisons with the stylised elegance of Vanilla Sky, or the timeless, anthropological Being John Malkovich (one of my all time favourites, I might add). However, unlike those two flicks, Cold Souls doesn’t grab you, shake you up and force you to absorb the oddness, instead your left in the passive middle ground of disinterest.
It’s not all bad. As her first feature, one has to admire the temerity of writer and director Sophie Barthes for tackling such a Kaufman-esque flick. It also looks very nice for an indie, with cinematographer Andrij Parekh presenting the stark realities of Giamatti’s real world, or his murky, opaque subconscious. Russia also looks a bit nice too. Even with all these niceties, one cannot truly get on board with the film as it feels like an amalgamation and caricature of all the broody, pseudo-scientific stories that have gone before it (see I Heart Huckabees, Stranger than Fiction and all the previously mentioned movies).
Like the retracing of Giamatti’s soul, I’ll end as I started. I was intrigued by this film when it was released back in 2009, for me it seemed like a quirky little tale which could punch well above it’s indie-feather weight stature. However, I clearly wasn’t that eager to see it as it’s taken another 16 months for me to do so. With the mystique it once had, I wish I had just left it alone.
MALKOVICH, MALKOVICH? NOPE - 2.5/5 GOLDEN NUGGETS
Film viewed on January 16th at my house
Whatever you’ve read, this is no mockumentary. Unlike the uncompromising genius of Guest’s This Is Spinal Tap, Waiting for Guffman et al, we’re not in on the jokes with I’m Still Here and it’s all very much at our expense. Or is it?
Previously appraised for his acting ability just here, Casey Affleck directs this evasive account into his megalomaniacal brother-in-law’s venture from acclaimed film actor to aspiring hip hop megamind. Who else, but Joaquin Phoenix?
Let’s not get bogged down with all the viral hyperbole that Joaquin Phoenix - monikered as ‘JP’ in the rap game - got caught up in during this two year stint. What with a universally lampooned Letterman interview, it seemed like this supposed hoax had gone too far, with Phoenix’s previous career very much hanging up at the back of the gym locker. Perhaps that’s why I’m Still Here is most fascinating: you can’t help but be transfixed by Phoenix’s transition. Whenever the coke fuelled, chubby funster isn’t having a paddy with all his nearest and dearest, or whipping out their genitalia, he’s babbling like a bearded baby that you feel the sincerest of empathy for.
As interesting the project was, the film is a different matter. Although funny in parts - an offstage Affleck explaining the concept of flies communicating via their reverberating wings much to Phoenix’s bewilderment is uncomprisingly brilliant - you don’t quite know what you’re watching or even how to watch it. It’s obtrusive like any decent documentary should, but perhaps due to the hysteria surrounding the project since it’s inception, you’re always considering who’s in on the act and how wholesome their ‘performances’ are.
It’s also thematical insubstantial as a film. An hour feels like two and by the admittedly gentle and patient closing scene, you’re exhausted seeing JP mess his life up.
So, it was all a hoax afterall. For me that’s irrelevant to how the film is received. Unlike Nigel Tufnel and the crew of Spinal Tap, we know that after a days’ filming they can take off the lavish makeup, remove the wigs and go back to the normalities of living. We don’t get this option with Joaquin Phoenix. Definitely the most difficult performance of his career thus far, it is the facade of Phoenix and the project that is worth mentioning, not the film that documents it so phlegmatically.
I’M STILL HERE, BUT NOT REALLY - 3/5 GOLDEN NUGGETS
Film viewed on January 15th at my house
After the absolutely pony adaptation that was Film 009, we’re back on top form with The Killer Inside Me.
Based on the 1952 Jim Thompson novel, this dark, emotionally vacuous tale is perfect for celluloid. A simple story based in a simple town with simple folk, yet the complexities of the character’s hold their own.
Upon general release, The Killer Inside Me was lambasted for it’s often brutal depiction of violence, primarily towards women. However, in consideration to the original source, Winterbottom’s dramatisations are pretty accurate, albeit shocking.
Casey Affleck plays the deputy sheriff Lou Ford, a straight talking crime fighter who also has a chequered past as a psychotic killer. As you do.
Alike Robert Mitchum in 1962’s Cape Fear, Affleck is both menacing and - beneath his dead eyes - is inexplicably captivating as Ford. Why his performance was left without award nominations is beyond me.
But the fantastic performances don’t stop there. Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson pull out career-defining performances as Ford’s subordinated love interests. There’s also a fantastic Bill Pullman cameo at the close of the film which trumps his Casper performance succinctly.
Alike his most recent work with The Trip (the buddy tale of comedians Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon touring the north of England on gastronomic escapades), The Killer Inside Me is crafted beautifully by Michael Winterbottom. Unearthing the peculiar intricacies of character’s really seems to be his bag and he delivers that, and then some.
Please don’t get bogged down with the misogynistic portrayal of women in this film. It is an era-piece based in a time of eminent transition within the deep south. Aside from that, it’s an exemplary adaptation work. In any case, pick up the book if you like gripping crime novels, minus the Martina Cole boisterousness (a bit).
83%
Film viewed on January 11th at my house.
PS - thanks to Rob Parker on the help with the review. You can find some of his stuff over at http://edgewaysart.co.uk/. Lovely chap.
